Electrical components in various machines have fluctuations in electrical parameters during operation. Such fluctuations may cause a phase imbalance, which is monitored to determine if an electrical component has failed and/or if the machine needs to be shut down. One such method and apparatus for detecting phase current imbalance in a power generator is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0066294.
Conventionally, detection of such phase imbalance is deemed as a failure of a component in the machine, and may require immediate attention of an operator of the machine. More often than not, the operator has to shut down the machine for verifying a reason behind the phase imbalance, troubleshooting and/or repairing such a presumed failure. However, in many scenarios, such phase imbalance is due to controls induced phenomena, which are not actual faults or failures of the electrical components in the machine. Even when the phase imbalance due to such controls induced phenomena can be ignored, conventional systems misidentify the phase imbalance to be a fault in the machine and require shut down of the machine incurring expensive downtimes and causing potential delays in the project for which the machine was deployed.
Accordingly, there is a need to resolve these problems and other problems related to conventional methods and systems that detect phase imbalance.